Sororities vie for spot on campus

Mia Katz/Contributing PhotographerLeaders from the national board of the Alpha Sigma Alpha and Kappa Kappa Gamma sororities presented to students and staff last week with the hopes of establishing a chapter at Binghamton University. The Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life is looking to bring another National Panhellenic Council sorority to BU by spring 2019.

Currently, BU has 53 Greek life organizations and comprises roughly 15 percent of the student population. Of those organizations, only six are NPC sororities, which are primarily social. The remaining sororities have a stated professional or multicultural focus.

L.C. Coghill, the director of fraternity and sorority life at BU, said he sent out a bulletin to the 26 NPC sororities to begin the process of bringing a new one to campus.

“Then they decide if they want to apply to come to your campus,” Coghill said. “And then from the applications you receive, you pick the groups that you would like to have come in and give a presentation.”

Coghill said Greek life organizations have been added to campus as the need for them has arisen. In 2015, Phi Mu was added to the mix of NPC sororities on campus because women said were not finding the Greek experience they wanted with the five sororities already available to them.

“For every person of quality who wants to be in a fraternity and sorority, I want to make sure that we are providing them an opportunity to do that,” Coghill said.

Kappa Kappa Gamma and Alpha Sigma Alpha sororities were the two applicants invited to campus and presented on campus last week. Kappa Kappa Gamma has chapters at Colgate University, Cornell University and Syracuse University; BU would be the first State University of New York to host a colony. Alpha Sigma Alpha has chapters at both Stony Brook University and SUNY Cortland and aims to expand more into the Northeast.

Groups from both organizations spent the day exploring campus before giving detailed presentations on how they would go about colonizing on campus and what that process would mean for interested students.

When Alpha Sigma Alpha presented its case, Jen Akright, a leadership consultant for the sorority, explained how the organization looks to fit in with existing Greek life.

“One of the things we do with our new chapters is we set requirements that are similar to all of [the existing sororities],” Akright said. “Specifically with academics, whatever the average GPA requirement is, we’re going to match that. With our chapter dues, we’re going to match that.”

“When we start a new chapter, we always want to go someplace where we feel like the students on that campus could make us a better organization,” Black said. “And we believe that about the students at Binghamton University.”